1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a media stacker capable of being inserted into a main body of a liquid ejecting apparatus and stacking an ejected recording medium, a liquid ejecting apparatus, and a recording device including the media stacker.
2. Related Art
Generally, in an ink jet type printer which is an example of a recording device, end portions of new recording media are lifted up by a hopper while being supported by a paper support which is disposed on a rear side of a main body of the printer, and an uppermost recording medium is drawn out by a feed roller and fed. The fed recording medium is transported by a transport roller to be recorded on, and, after information is recorded thereon, the recording medium is discharged by a discharge roller to be discharged into a stacker which is disposed on a front side of the main body of the printer (see JP-A-2003-73007).
Since the stacker is required to stack various sizes of recording media in a limited space, the stacker has a multi-level structure having three or more levels which can be inserted and extracted. As the position of a stacker portion of the stacker having the multi-level structure becomes higher, a support width of the stacker portion is reduced. Accordingly, when a recording medium having a relatively big size such as a JIS A2 size is discharged, an end portion of the recording medium, especially both sides of the end portion, may be protruded off the stacker to be bent.
On the other hand, a stacker which can be inserted into or extracted from a main body of a printer by being slid approximately parallel to a bottom surface of the main body of the printer has been proposed (see JP-A-2004-75264 and JP-A-200-59174). When the stacker having this structure is used, a stacking area can be formed to be large to make it possible to stack a relatively large recording medium stably. In order to slide the stacker substantially parallel to the bottom surface of the main body of the printer, a guide mechanism is required.
The guide mechanism may include guide pins and guide grooves, as an example. Two guide pins are installed with a predetermined distance therebetween so as to protrude on each side of a discharge stacker. One guide groove is formed on each one of side frames which are located on both sides of the stacker in the main body of the printer. The guide mechanism having this structure guides sliding of the stacker by causing the guide pins to slide along the guide grooves. However, since the guide pins slide along the same guide groove, twisting occurs between the guide groove and the guide pins to deteriorate the operability of the guide mechanism when a force is unevenly applied to the guide pins. The twisting easily occurs especially when the stacker is slid at a sharp angle between the insertion position and the extraction position without greatly changing an angle of the stacker.